A friend’s startup started layoffs this week. He was working on the servers until 3:00am the day before his Last Big Meeting. It got me thinking.

We worry a lot when things crash. When I took this picture, my thought was “Whew! I’m out of that dangerous dotcom phase of my career.” In retrospect, this would have been the perfect time to start a scrappy Web 2.0 business with a couple of my buddies.

We’re in one of those between-times now. In a few years, I suspect we’ll either be doing the new-new thing that’s germinating right now, or wishing that we had. There’s at least 1500 web-savvy folks about to come on the job market this year. Who knows what they’ll cook up?

The last time I drove by this building, the sign had been replaced, but the www and .com remained. There was something new going on between them, though.